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The fate of school vouchers in Tennessee will be decided tomorrow, and there is an usual fight brewing. The problem doesn’t seem to be whether or not to offer vouchers, but how many and to whom. Arguments over these details could lead to vouchers being scrapped altogether.

On today's edition of The FreedomCast, Director of Grassroots for FreedomWorks, Whitney Neal joins me to discuss several school choice bills currently making their way through the Texas legislature and why school choice is the civil rights issue of our times.
You can support FreedomWorks' efforts in Texas and on behalf of children everywhere who deserve school choice.

Meet the Thompsons, a homeschooling family from Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson both attended traditional public schools, but decided they wanted something different for their own four children. So, how did this family decide that homeschooling was best for them, and what happened next?

Republicans are beginning to coalesce around School Choice with Senators Rand Paul and Lamar Alexander’s amendment. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas began with a rallying cry in his key-note address at CPAC declaring “education is too important for it to be controlled by bureaucrats in Washington, taking choices away from parents and kids…We need to champion school choice – the civil rights issue of the next generation.” Not only is Senator Ted Cruz correct about school choice being the civil rights issue of the next generation, but it is the civil rights issue of this generation.

Kids are weird — especially mine. Sure, I can identify personality traits as coming from me and my wife, but they’re jumbled up in odd ways. If we’re the original track, our kids are the dance remixes. My eldest daughter is analytical and conscientious when work needs to be done, but fearless and funny in her off time. Her younger sister will procrastinate and goof off, but will create elaborate, amazing projects just for fun. Definitely related, but wildly different.

Today, the Indiana Supreme Court made an important decision for families in that state by unanimously upholding their school voucher law. “Finding that the challengers have not satisfied the high burden required to invalidate a statute on constitutional grounds, we affirm the trial court’s judgment upholding the constitutionality of the statutory voucher program,” the court wrote.

While Tennessee currently allows students to switch from one public school to another, both in-and-out of district, their overall options are very limited. With the currently proposed legislation, SB196/HB190, legislators aim to create much greater educational opportunities that improve the lives of all children; especially low-income families. Children don’t deserve to fall victim to bureaucracies that standardize school programs when their individual needs are at stake.

It might seem strange to suggest that the American educational system look to bourbon, but maybe that is just what they need. Maker’s Mark had a little lesson in free market economics this week, and schools should take note.

The first part of this series focused on the various efforts around the country to establish school choice. This piece attempts to shed light upon the history of compulsory public education in America. As the nation debates the merits of school choice I’ve noticed a common theme in the arguments of the ideas’ opponents. They assert that the implementation of school choice would abandon a noble tradition with early roots in the American founding.

Mr. D and Mrs. R Smith are Californians working hard and doing their best to raise their young son and daughter. DS was raised with both public and private schooling, and RS completed all of her schooling through the public school system. When the time came to send their own children to school, however, they saw that the school situation was far from sunny and were concerned the public options wouldn't meet their child's needs. They decided that they would have to send their children to private schools.